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Monday launch no longer appears possible BY WILLIAM HARWOOD STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS "SPACE PLACE" & USED WITH PERMISSION Posted: August 27, 2006 NASA managers debating launch options for the shuttle Atlantis have a new issue to contend with: Hurricane Ernesto, now predicted to strike the west coast of Florida late this week just north of Tampa.
Depending on Ernesto's eventual course, the timing of its passage and what needs to be done to recover from the lightning strike, NASA managers could be forced to consider hauling Atlantis back to the protection of the Vehicle Assembly Building, a move that would use up most of the shuttle's September launch window. NASA wants to launch Atlantis in daylight for photo documentation of the shuttle's external tank and heat shield. If the ship isn't off the ground by Sept. 13, NASA will be faced with the prospect of just three lighted launch days between then and the end of the year: two in late October and one in December. Complicating the picture, launch tries between Sept. 7 and 13 would require agreement by the Russians to delay launch of a Soyuz capsule carrying the space station's next crew. A shuttle launch past Sept. 7 would require a dead-of-night landing for the returning station crew and the Russians want to avoid that because this will be the recovery team's first landing operation since a recent switch to civilian management. NASA's Mission Management Team plans to meet at 1 p.m. and a news conference is expected later in the day. Updates will be posted here as new information becomes availabe.
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Space shuttle Atlantis is delivered to Kennedy Space Center's launch pad 39B on August 2 to begin final preparations for blastoff on the STS-115 mission to resume construction of the International Space Station.
Just after 1 a.m. local time August 2, the crawler-transporter began the slow move out of the Vehicle Assembly Building carrying space shuttle Atlantis toward the launch pad.
Space shuttle Atlantis is transported to the cavernous Vehicle Assembly Building where the ship will be mated to the external fuel tank and twin solid rocket boosters for a late-August liftoff.
VIDEO:
OFFICIALS EXPLAIN INITIAL SCRUB 